Hey guys!
I just sat the GAMSAT UK in Melb. I'm not sure how I did (not expecting great things for my first try... but it was so valuable getting some practice in!!). With a humanities degree my strength is defiantly in the first and second sections. I felt like a boss when I recognised a few of the paragraphs from books I have read. They were:
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Screwtape Letters" by CS Lewis
So if you want to read some books that are the type chosen by acer as appropriate for the gamsat, those are two...
I have spoken with a fair amount of people stressing about the first section and saying that you cant "learn it" like you can with science. I would disagree.... My suggestion would be to google semi-classic books like the ones above (they both have wikipedia pages)... or buy some yellow penguin classics from dymmoks, and practice speed reading. try to read a paragraph in a minute and train yourself to UNDERSTAND the paragraph with one quick reading. Practice reading hard texts and write down the unknown words when they pop up. If you do this for 1/2 hour each day, I'm sure you will feel much more confident with your reading/interpreting skills come March. Practice will make perfect!

I just wanted to clarify two things! Firstly, I made it seem like reading the two suggested books would be helpful. I think checking out a plot summary on wikipedia would be sufficient. What I think is most important is just reading paragraphs and practising speed reading. There is no point forcing yourself to read a whole book if you don't enjoy it. It would be better to practice speed reading with single paragraphs/half pages and use a wikipedia plot summary for context. That is what you can expect from the GAMSAT questions. Secondly, I suggested writing down words that you dont know... I meant to then suggest finding out the definitions and memorizing them...

If anyone else has advice for section one, lets get it happening here! It would be great to get more tips/opinions (for myself) and also to encourage those who are freaked out by the humanities section!

Another exercise which I follow is making 8-10 bullet point summary on the overall meaning that I grasp after reading literary paragraphs/prose excerpts. This actually has helped me a lot in formulating smart synopsis to answer the queries generally asked in the test papers.
For strengthening vocabulary I follow the practice of referring a dictionary each time I encounter a new word, in whatever material I am reading or going through. And if I fail to understand the meaning of the same word when I find it later, I again go-back to my good old dictionary.Trust me this exercise although seems tedious has actually helped me a lot in remembering new words.

That's that. Hey guys kindly post in here to discuss some actual solutions to crack the humanities section. Lets all of us be vocal.